Pride & Surrender Read online

  I want nothing more than to close my eyes and sink into the comfort of hiding, but his gaze transfixes me. The electricity sparking between our joined palms anchoring me so I can do nothing but ride out the storm.

  My breath comes fast as the steep climb grows inside me.

  Sex and need and lust fill the air as he takes me, pounding into me so hard the headboard slams against the wall.

  Our bodies grind together as though we can’t get close enough.

  It’s a brutal joining made all the more intense by our eye contact. The noises we make will embarrass me later, but now it’s so animalistic, so raw, filled with so much power, I revel in it.

  My fingers tighten on his, and I pound my fist into his back as I climb higher and higher.

  Oh god, this need will overtake me.

  The bed seems to have taken on the rhythm of our straining bodies.

  We’re slick with sweat.

  Mad with desire.

  Demanding in our lust.

  Release hovers right out of my reach, the crest so high it frightens me. Something like this, it has to hurt, has to be crushing.

  I start to fight it.

  The tide of emotion.

  The pleasure spiraling out of control inside me.

  All the elements in the room.

  His body over mine.

  Inside me.

  The sound of the bed shaking the walls and floor beneath us.

  The damp, hot sheen that clings to my skin.

  It’s all too much. Surely this will kill me.

  He holds me to him. With his hand, his gaze and his body.

  With one punishing thrust, his pelvic bone hits my clit. His chest abrades my nipples. His cock buries deep.

  The storm breaks and the orgasm pours down on me. The pleasure so intense, for the first time in my life, I scream in the throes of my climax.

  As the powerful contractions rack my body, I cling desperately to his gaze, clutching his hand while I ride out the orgasm to end all orgasms. And while he anchors me to him, catching me just as he promised, he thrusts inside me once, twice, three times, setting off another wave of vicious contractions, making my cunt ripple along his cock.

  With a roar that vibrates the walls, Christos comes. He pumps inside me over and over, drawing out wave after wave of blinding pleasure.

  Finally, the last of the most intense climax of my life fades away and my heart rate begins to slow, my breath easing. He brushes my wet hair from my face, his hips going still, his body gentling.

  As sanity returns, I wait for the embarrassment. What I’d done with him, it hadn’t been pretty. It wasn’t sweet, romantic movie sex. This sex had been hot and wild and messy.

  But strangely, the embarrassment doesn’t come.

  The haze of lust clears from my vision and he snaps into a crystal-clear focus. He’s watching me.

  Light dances in his green eyes, and something else gleams there too, some sort of hidden inner knowledge. I search his expression and know he’s waiting patiently for me to understand too.

  Our joined hands tingle and I finally understand what I’ve been craving so desperately earlier, and why I fought so desperately against him. I’d recognized him the moment I met him and I’d been running from the truth ever since.

  It comes over me like a rush, the recognition as fierce as my orgasm had been.

  We are two sides of the same coin, one unable to exist without the other. Predator and prey, dominant and submissive, the taker and the taken—it doesn’t really matter what I call it. The roles are established.

  I can’t speak the words. They lodge in my throat, holding back all the emotions rolling inside me. But I silently acknowledge the truth—Christos and I, we want the same thing—his complete and total possession of me.

  9

  I tug at my seat belt and stare pensively out the front window of Christos’s Mercedes. “Are you sure about this?” I ask him for the hundredth time.

  He smooths a palm over my knee, the heat of his hand warming my skin even though my white cotton pants. “I’m sure, Juliet.” He pulls to a stop at the light and leans over to kiss the side of my neck. “They will love you.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek. How had I let him talk me into this? I hadn’t met a man’s family since my ex-husband’s, and here I was, on my way to meet Christos’s.

  “It’s a lot of pressure.” Didn’t he understand the seriousness of the step he’s taking? He doesn’t bring women home. And now he’s showing up with me? Their expectations had to be sky-high.

  He slides his palm around the back of my neck, kneading a spot with his thumb as the light turns green and he steps on the gas. “No pressure. It’s a simple party. We eat. We drink. We talk. I’ve seen you do that a million times and you’re quite charming.”

  “That’s different!” I insist, once again gearing up for the argument I’ve been making all day.

  “I know.” He squeezes the nape of my neck. “And I’m reminding you—you’re good at this. You know how to talk to people, how to make small talk and polite conversation.”

  “I’m good at business talk.” I cross my hands over my chest. “Do you think your parents want to discuss corporate restructuring?”

  “My parents will be so thrilled you’re there, they won’t care if you sit in the corner and don’t say a word.”

  “That would make a great impression,” I say with considerable sarcasm.

  He laughs and I sigh, turning to stare out the window as we drive down the congested River North streets. Of course he’s right. I’m making a big deal out of nothing. I do small talk with the best of them, but this is different.

  Everything about Christos is new. For almost two years I’d been viewing him as a threat, an adversary. Now I’m meeting his family. The drastic swing in our relationship is giving me whiplash.

  Last night had been like a dream, a fantasy come to life. We’d slept. Talked about everything and nothing. I relaxed around him for the first time since I met him. He made me laugh. He’d let me take pictures of him, despite his protests, charming me with the look of horror he’d given me when I’d taken out the camera. At one in the morning we’d ordered pizza and devoured it as though we’d never seen food before. Then we’d gone at it as if we’d never touched, as if we hadn’t had wild, passionate sex numerous times already. Unable to make the trip upstairs to my bedroom, he fucked me on the kitchen table until I was once again screaming his name in ecstasy.

  It was hands down one of the best nights of my life, and when we’d finally gone to bed for good, I’d slept like a baby.

  But as soon as we’d woken, I’d started waiting for the other shoe to drop. That the world hadn’t crashed around me made me almost more nervous than if it had. Now I was on my way to his parents’ house and I had no idea what to do with myself or the panic jumping around in my belly.

  “You’re still fretting.” It isn’t a question. He moves from my neck to rest his palm over my thigh, entirely too high for comfort.

  “I can’t help it.” I look back at him and just kind of stare dumbly at him for a moment in amazement. Was I really having this conversation with him? How had I gotten here? A month ago he’d been my mortal enemy. Today, he sits next to me, touching me as though he owns me, looking gorgeous and composed and not the slightest bit anxious.

  Irrationally, I want to smack him. “Seriously, why do you have to be like this?”

  The corners of his mouth twitch. “Like what?”

  “All this calm is grating, you should be nervous.”

  “Why?” His hand drapes over the steering wheel, dark sunglasses hiding his green eyes. In all black, he looks like sex and sin, completely unaware of his overwhelming appeal.

  With a frustrated snarl, I tuck a stray lock of hair behind my ear and smooth over my white sleeveless blouse.

  “Would you worry if I came home with you?” He grasps my hand and brings it to his lips.

  The thought of Christos Constant
ine sitting in my beat-up childhood kitchen back in my parents’ small Ohio home is almost enough to make me break out in hives. “You’re kidding, right?”

  The car crawls a couple of feet forward before coming to a stop. He smiles at me. “So, you’re intent on worrying, is that it?”

  I shrug, resisting the childish “duh” that springs to my lips.

  See, this is what I hate. I have no composure around him, no sense of control that infuses my interactions with other people. I can’t trust that some scathing remark won’t pop out of my mouth and embarrass me in front of his parents.

  Who knows what he might say to irritate me to rash behavior?

  “I should have remembered who I was talking to.” The muscle of his thigh flexes under his dark pants as he presses on the gas and the car once again begins to move. “Since I’m such a great guy, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.”

  Sensing a trap, I narrow my gaze. “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  He squeezes my thigh and grins at me so devilishly all my nerves start to tingle. He makes a right turn down a one-way side street. “Clearly you need a distraction, something else to worry about.”

  “Ha!” I’m unable to come up with a better response as his fingers move higher up my leg. Despite my nerves, my clit swells, starting the now familiar pulsing that seems to beat out the rhythm—Touch me, touch me, touch me. I go to push his hand away, but he catches it in his strong grasp.

  He makes another right and pulls into a spot that magically appears as though the gods have saved it just for him.

  “We’re here.” He points to a converted brick brownstone before taking off his sunglasses and tossing them into the console.

  I glance at it, my heart sinking down into my stomach, and I’m suddenly thankful for the comfort of his hand on mine. This is it.

  “Look at me, Juliet.” I do, and he clasps my fingers. “I promise you this will be fine. They will adore you.”

  My pulse thuds in my neck and all I can do is nod.

  He pulls me closer to him and leans to meet me halfway, kissing me softly on the lips. “Now about that distraction I promised.”

  Not really paying attention, I close my eyes, placing my free hand over his heart. The combination of his breath and the steady beat calms me.

  “Tonight, I’m going to take you back to your house.” His voice strokes over my skin, soothing me with its deep timbre. “I’m going to spread you out on your bed and strip you naked.”

  Excitement seeps through my blood, washing away some of my nervousness. He is right. This does help. The corners of my mouth lift when the rise and fall of his chest quickens. “Do you want to know what I’m going to do next?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “I’m going to tie you to that fantastic headboard and make you beg for me.”

  My lids fly open and I shake my head. “No. No way.”

  He nods. “Yes, Juliet.”

  I don’t know which is stronger, my desire or my fear, but they mix inside me and create a lethal cocktail. I can’t do that. I’ll be completely vulnerable to him, unable to get away. It’s one thing to feel his power and control over me, quite another to experience it. Once again I shake my head.

  “Yes.” He kisses my mouth, slow and deep. I want to melt under him, but I can’t because I know he’s serious. This is his plan, to have me bound and helpless under him. “I’m going to tie your hands together over your head, clasped on either side of that metal scroll.”

  His gaze searches my face, gauging my reaction, but all I can do is blink back at him like a deer in the headlights. “Then I’m going to tie your legs apart so your thighs are spread open to me. So your cunt is exposed and I can see how wet you are.”

  Unbearable excitement rushes through my veins. Do I want this? No, I couldn’t. It’s too much. “No, I don’t want that.” If I say the words out loud, maybe they would make them true.

  “But you do.” He looks into my eyes and his hand goes to my neck, his fingers pressing into my pounding pulse. “I can feel your need. I can feel how you crave it. And how much it scares you.”

  I swallow, hard, feeling the press of his thumb on my throat, I flood with heat. Why had I ever told him how this affects me? Now I’m at his mercy.

  “You’re wet for me right now. Thinking about how it’s going to feel, what I’m going to do to you.” He kisses me again, and I can feel his control slipping away. “I could fuck you right here in this car. On another day, I will, and you’ll let me, but now I’m going to make us both wait because it will make your total surrender that much sweeter.”

  * * *

  He is right, the jerk. As we walk up the front steps of his parents’ house, our hands clasped tightly together, I’m not worried about meeting them anymore.

  Well, I am, but not with the same single-minded obsession I had been because, as he’d promised, I have something new to worry about. How can I possibly survive being tied up and helpless? I’m sure I don’t want it but can’t quite deny how my stomach jumps every time the image of me spread out before him comes unbidden into my mind.

  Christos twists the knob of the front door and flings it open into a wide, spacious foyer. I hold my breath as I step over the threshold, praying I will survive this party and this night.

  He squeezes my fingers, and lets go, sliding his arm around my waist to pull me close. “You’ll do fine,” he whispers in my ear as a beautiful little girl in a pink-and-white-flowered party dress flies into the room.

  “Uncle Christy,” she says excitedly, black curls bouncing as she dances around him.

  Uncle Christy? I raise a brow at him, and he shrugs.

  Suddenly the little girl stops on a dime, plants her hands on tiny nonexistent hips and taps the toe of her white shoe. “Where’s my present?”

  He laughs, bending down to smooth his hand over her glossy hair. “And why would I bring you presents, little one?”

  “It’s my birthday,” she glares up at him with dark eyes. “I’m six!”

  “It is?” He frowns, looking concerned and utterly serious. “Are you sure?”

  Thoroughly charmed at the sight of him with the little girl, I can’t help but smile. Bit by bit, Christos is becoming human to me—no longer the enemy, the adversary. No longer the Greek god cast upon us mere mortals. He is simply a man, and his realness continues to chip away at my barriers.

  She blows out a puff of air, sending her dark bangs flying. “Yes!”

  “Have you been a good girl?” he asks her.

  “Yes,” she nods vigorously. “Very good.”

  “I don’t know,” he says with exaggerated suspicion, but his affection for her is written all over his face. “That’s not what your mama says.”

  Dark brown eyes with thick long lashes narrow. “I know you brought me something. You never forget.”

  Christos points at me. “And where are your manners, Nicolette? Say hello to my Juliet.”

  The little girl turns to look up at me and my heart fills my throat when she grasps handfuls of her dress and curtsies. “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Juliet.”

  Christos laughs and rubs a palm over her gleaming black hair. “She’s a princess in training.”

  A whisper tries to sneak into my mind, but I slam the door shut, refusing to let it enter. Those are not the kind of fantasies I allow myself about the man next to me.

  I lean down and hold out my hand to the little girl. “Happy birthday, Nicolette.”

  That tiny hand slips into mine. “Do you know where my present is?” she asks with a six-year-old’s single-minded focus.

  “Nicolette,” a woman speaks in accented English before continuing on in what I assume is Greek.

  The little girl turns and beams a brilliant smile at the older woman, responding in the foreign language before waving to us and trotting down a hallway.

  I straighten and smooth my pants, my palms turning clammy in an instant. I hadn’t thought I had any expectations about what
Christos’s parents would be like, but I’m wrong. Somewhere along the way I’d begun to picture a caricature of an old immigrant.

  Nothing like the stunning woman standing before me.

  Although I know she’s in her sixties, she looks far younger as she glides toward us in a flowing red sundress. Glossy black hair falls to her shoulders, setting off clear green eyes that remind me of a cat with the sharp bite of intelligence shining in them.

  “Mama,” Christos says, his fingers tightening on my waist as though reassuring me. “This is Juliet Russo.”

  She offers me a brilliant smile that transforms her face into something so indescribably radiant I want to take her picture. If I’d held my camera, it would have been impossible to resist capturing her. “Ah, this is the Juliet I’ve heard so much about.”

  I cast a startled glance at Christos, who merely shrugs and grins.

  Unable to think about what he might have said about me on top of all the other thoughts swirling in my mind, I put on my most sincere smile and outstretch my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Constantine.”

  She ignores my hand and envelopes me in a warm hug where she whispers a few words in Greek, squeezing me tight before pulling back and grasping my face in her hands. “You’re right, Christos,” she says, rolling his name over her tongue. “She’s lovely.”

  Caught off guard by her warm openness, I fight the instinct to pull away and step out of her embrace. Off kilter, I long for the safety of politeness but am able to mummer, “Thank you.”

  “I insist you call me Amara.” She drops her hands from my face and tucks her hand around my arm. “Come, we’ll get acquainted in the kitchen.” She waves a hand at Christos. “Everyone is out back, go.”

  Panic rolls through my belly, and I cast him a silent Help me plea. I’m not ready to be alone with her.

  “Mama.” Christos trails after us despite his mother’s order. “Let me introduce Juliet before you steal her away from me.”

  “Oh very well,” she says, her tone warm. “He’s scared of what secrets I’ll reveal once we’re alone.”